LSU’s smoke and mirrors fun to watch
Published 6:00 pm Monday, October 23, 2017
OXFORD, Miss. — The sun arose this morning in a world where the New Orleans Saints are in first place in the NFC South and the LSU Tigers are in control of their own destiny in the Southeastern Conference race.
What a country, huh?
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The Saints? Apparently they just snapped their fingers after Week 2 and went from the worst team in the NFL to the hottest.
Neat trick, that is. Seemed pretty simple.
LSU is a little more complicated.
OK, granted LSU’s “control” involves a destiny that includes Nick Saban, Alabama and The (dreaded) Process.
So it’s all relative.
Probably a pipe dream.
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But, as the Tigers finally get the rest of October off before tangling with the Tide, it’s also — as Saban would say — relative to where LSU was at the start of the month, which was losers to Troy and staring at a forlorn existence with a Cajun dunce for a head coach holding a huge contract buy-out.
So when does Ed Orgeron start to get some credit for this turnaround?
Somebody did something after everybody left these Tigers for dead.
Since October started, somebody held this team together with a gutsy bounceback win at Florida, an incredible comeback at home against Auburn and, finally, a good, solid 40-24 victory over Ole Miss Saturday night in what had all the makings of a classic “trap” game with the rabid home Hotty Toddy crowd seeming to anticipate it from the beginning.
Anytime you send them heading for the exits early in the fourth quarter in that situation, you know you’re having a good game.
Yeah, take a week off, Tigers. You earned it.
Orgeron won’t. He’ll be off on the recruiting trail today, his speciality, preferably tracking down some linemen.
But, if anything, this month has shown that the Cajun BéBé experiment as head coach is worth watching, maybe even with a little patience.
Yeah, it was a tough sell after the Troy debacle, which came on the heels of LSU’s 37-7 loss to Mississippi State.
But he’s followed it up with one of the better three-game stretches of crisis-management head coaching you’re going to find.
The aftermath at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium Saturday was as good of a place as any to reflect on it.
Orgeron has won as many SEC games this month (3) as he did in three failed seasons in Oxford.
Different situations, for sure.
But a different Orgeron, too.
LSU is a pretty decent team right now because it’s playing to its potential, and maybe nudging beyond it.
But make no mistake, it’s not a great team. It has some talent, for sure, but also a lot of flaws at a lot of key spots, much of it complicated by more real youth than is ever advisable in the SEC.
They’re getting by with it because Orgeron has them focused and playing their tails off from start to finish.
There are other factors.
For one thing, you just have to be totally fascinated by this LSU offense, whatever it is.
Saban will have two weeks to study it, and, being the smartest guy in any room, maybe he can then explain it to the masses.
It’s hard to take your eyes of it.
It looks like they’re making it up as they go, although not in a plays-drawn-up-in-the-dirt sort of way.
It’s more like cobbling together something week-by-week, preferably something that needs but little input from an offensive live.
Smoke and mirrors, most likely.
Saturday was a good example.
Just when, in recent weeks, it was starting to look like LSU of all places was going to render the tailback null, void and an innocent bystander, the Tigers and offensive coordinator Matt Canada unleashed a dual-tailback barrage that accounted for 495 yards.
Land, air … whatever.
LSU had 593 yards total offense, of which 200 came through the air — and not a single wide receiver had a single reception.
They won’t pout. They’re just as likely to hog carries from the running backs with all this crazy stuff the Tigers do.
But Saturday the reigning SEC offensive player of the week, DJ Chark, did not touch the ball except for harmless punt returns.
LSU’s offense didn’t suffer.
They figured it out … somehow, someway.
They absolutely could not protect Danny Etling in the pocket, but no matter. They figured out a work-around to where he could get the ball quickly to others, mostly tailback Darrell Williams, but even F-backs (or whatever the Tigers are calling J.D. Moore) or — as God is my witness — a tight end for 60 yards.
It really is a sight to see.
November will tell how good the Tigers really are.
But, if nothing else, that team everybody left for dead at the end of September has become fun to watch.
LSU running back Derrius Guice (5) runs on a long gain against Mississippi during the second half of an NCAA college football game in Oxford, Miss., Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017. No. 24 LSU won 40-24. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
